Enforcement of IP Rights in Kenya Workshop

On May 17-20, 2011, representatives from US and Kenyan agencies gathered in Nairobi for a four day event, “Enforcement of IP Rights in Kenya: An Interagency Approach with Private Sector Coordination”.

At the invitation of the US Embassy and the American Chamber of Commerce in Kenya, Tracy Faustin participated and presented ICC’s Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP) initiative to the workshop. The primary objective of this mission was to develop a BASCAP – Kenya Anti-Counterfeit Agency (ACA) work plan, support BASCAP members in attendance (BAT, Diageo, HP, Microsoft, Pfizer, P&G, Unilever), establish key US government contacts for future projects and assess ACA’s effectiveness as an agency since meeting the group in October 2010. ACA is currently working on a public awareness campaign, and recently used an adapted version of the BASCAP public awareness toolkit “I Buy Real” for World Anti-Counterfeiting Day, June 2011.

By promoting an interagency approach among the key partner agencies and the private sector, the workshop opened up collective discussion of the situation and contributed to establishing a framework to help deter the flow of counterfeit and pirate goods to the Kenyan market. The result was an increased capacity for identification and interdiction of counterfeit goods by the ACA and its key agency partners, as well as an enhanced policy and operational coordination amongst agencies with public-private sector cooperation.

The event was organized by the US Department of Commerce (USDOC), Kenya Anti-Counterfeit Agency, US Department of Justice (USDOJ), and US Embassy Nairobi in conjunction with the Kenya Copyright Board (KeCoBo) and Kenya Industrial Property Institute (KIPI). Programme highlights included discussion of the socio-economic impact and health and safety issues in the consumer goods and creative industries, the role and mandate of ACA constituent member agencies and their impact on the protection of intellectual property rights, presentations by the agencies and the private sector, discussion on the impediments to enforcement in Kenya and the legal and administrative framework of an interagency approach, and border enforcement best practices.